stories about land
Elsa Matossian Hoover B+C|A class of 2017 Senior independent project, Karen Fairbanks, Fall 2016 Chi-miigwetch to Professor Fairbanks who guided me, to the contributors who shared their wisdom, and especially to RH.
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A note about storytellers: Everyone who added their stories to this project indentified themselves differently and so initials became the clearest way to name each person’s story. This gray text denotes the author’s words. Stories come from: SHWM and RH, who are cousins four ways; DDR and NR, who are also cousins and also SHWM and RH’s cousins; KH, who is RH’s brother; KE, RH’s cousin and best friend; JT, also a cousin, and HRC; Cynthia Kipp, a grandmother to several of these storytellers and former member of the Blackfeet Housing board; and Chancy Kittson, current head of Blackfeet Housing.
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We have so many different complexities of ownership, right? Fragmented, fractionated ownership between the park, between fee lands, between trust lands, between tribal lands, between fractionated individual trust lands‌the legacy of allotment is very transparent. -ddr
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Google Earth
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St. Mary on the Blackfeet Reservation (right); Glacier National Park campgrounds (left)
When are you in the United States, and when are you acutely aware of your presence there? What does a state, say Montana, feel like? Where does the settler state end and Blackfoot Country begin? These questions are not necessarily spatial and not necessarily answerable. They emerge in stories and disappear. That is where this project starts. Eight young(ish) Blackfeet people tell their stories about finding ways to live in their homeland. All of them grew up on the Blackfeet Reservation, left, and returned. Without prompting, each of them tied their experiences to the citizenship system that only tribes use: blood quantum. Though blood quantum and its associated laws and histories are not critical knowledge on or off the rez, every person who shared their story here had thought of its repercussions in great depth. Its presence in all those conversations refocused this work on that system lurking within every indigenous person’s rights to indigenous land within America.
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In listening to these stories one by one, I could hear a hundred conversations taking place in our communities and in our heads: about home and the homeland, about growing up and not fitting in, about the ways we dream of and fight for our sovereignty’s return, and on and on. These four books are an experiment in putting those conversations together through fragmentary interviews, recollections, maps, photography, satellite imagery, and graphical experiments. All of this material should be questioned as it offers multiple truths, frames, and distortions. Above all, it tells true stories and attempts to tell them well. It is my hope that the project as a whole can direct a little light to the deep pain that blood quantum continues to inflict on many people and nations at many scales, and that awareness of this pain can shape better relationships and better fights in and beyond Indian Country. Book #1 explores the ways in which Blackfoot Country has been formed of boundaries, past and present. The power to name the land, build on it, gather from it, and care for it--even the power to live above the floodline--were all systematically stripped away by the processes of colonization that gradually made this land into Montana, USA and Alberta, Canada. Reclaiming those names through language, those rights to sustenance, and the power to build good homes are all integral to decolonization. Revealing these complex relationships and intersecting rights imposed on the land through mapped boundaries and captured imagery is a way to start.
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Treaties, executive orders, and agreements confining Blackfoot territory
| 1855 |
| 1873 |
| 1874 |
We’re one of the federally recognized tribes; that means we have a treaty with the United States government that they signed in 1855. They signed the treaty with our people and said they would always take care of our health, education, and welfare in lieu of the land they’re going to give to the immigrants and pioneers and that’s what they did. The reservation extended way down past the Butte and Anaconda mines, and then stories about the copper and nickel deposits came out and they needed it, so they moved the reservation back and we were left with nothing but oil. So then they took that, and then they took Glacier National Park. So that’s why we’re here on the reservation. -cynthia kipp
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| 1888 |
| 1896 |
Blackfoot territory pre-1855 to present
Canada USA
adapted from: Glenbow Museum Montana Cadastral 0
30
60
120mi
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We can go three generations here: trust land can go to non-enrolled descendants for three generations and on the fourth generation if those people still aren’t enrolled it flips over to fee status land to be bought and sold by anyone. The ultimate goal was to assimilate Indians so allotment was seen as a transitional phase between tribal and Americanized. Congress was going to do this by turning Indians into landowners, so land was broken up and allotted to families. It was staggered—it literally took man-hours to allot land—so they started with the Omahas and gave them fee land; within one year they had lost almost all of their reservation because they didn’t know how to use money and the banks seized it to repay loans. Congress invented trust land to hold it in trust while the Indians learned how to be farmers, but along the way they extended the trust period indefinitely because it just wasn’t working. When you get to this point where we are now, because we have such a horrendous economy and we now have land inherited by fourth generation descendants and it’s getting kicked over to fee status. You’re asking these people with no money to pay taxes on this land, so after a period anyone can go to the county courthouse and pay your back-taxes and own the land. The Hutterites do that all the time; that’s why they own so much of the reservation. -shwm
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Google Earth
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Hutterite colonies on the Blackfeet Reservation
In order to learn the Blackfoot language, we have to cover an area that, what is it, about 200 miles from here to Siksika, and the other two reserves are within that, so that’s a lot of land you have to cover. A bulk of our funding for āasāisst∙tŏ language society will definitely come off the rez, and then a majority of what we’re producing is for people off the rez because it’s virtually impossible to access the language away from one of the four reserves. It’s difficult as it is to access the language on the rez, so off the rez it’s just heightened to the nth degree. -rh
Blackfoot lands split by the border, 2016
siksika
uputoo”tsii piikuni kīynnāa Canada USA
umsskaapii piikuni
Canadian Blackfoot reserves American Blackfeet reservation 12
Google Earth
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Border crossings US-Canada (l to r): Glacier Park, Port of Piegan, Del Bonita
Valier, MT just beyond the current reservation boundaries, near Heart Butte
Google Earth
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I leave every weekend; I’m a coach so I constantly go to all the visiting towns and compete with kids. Well, they do the competition and I guide ‘em. When I was younger, when I was playing, played all over the West Coast pretty much. When I was a hotshot firefighter, I fought all over the West Coast. -kh
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Our challenge is we have an ever-growing population and a need for new housing, but our budget exists just to operate and maintain our rentals. We haven’t had development dollars since 1996. Our tribe and tribes across the nation are tasked with developing more housing with essentially a zero-dollar development budget. For Blackfeet Housing, we’ve had five tax credit projects, four of those have been new construction. But tribes are competing against other developers in the state so it’s not a guaranteed fix or funding by any means. While we’re very thankful for the program, 24 houses every seven years is never going to meet the need that we have.
The biggest gap we have right now in our community is there are services and programs that help the low-income families and there are programs that help the next income bracket but where we are lacking are those right at middle-income where there isn’t any help. Given the unique challenges of building on trust land, they can’t secure a loan. They want to get their own home, so the biggest thing is pushing home ownership. My thought would be to provide a whole home-ownership program. You’re too poor to be rich and too rich to be poor. Another group that is missed is young individuals or couples who haven’t started families who want a better apartment or a better quality of living. -chancy kittson
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They built the first HUD homes a number of years ago; then they built houses after the Flood of 1964; and then they installed the water system or drilled wells out in the country. These houses aren’t adequate for the cold, when it’s -30° or -40°F. They need a wood stove on top of the electric heater. They’ve never built enough homes for the people, like the kids who graduate now and the ones that get married: there’s nothing for them. Boys Robert’s age (30), they live at home; there’s no homes for them so they live with grandma and grandpa or aunt and uncle. There’s just so many people that are in need. -cynthia kipp
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Cut Bank, MT, just beyond the current reservation boundaries
Google Earth
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Because this is a reservation and a very specific tribal culture I come out of, what I found in all the years I spent off-reservation—which was most of the time 18 to now—this is the only place I can just be myself. The way that people think and behave here and interact with each other is so specific; like it’s indigenous—when I was in New Zealand I got along really well with Maoris and that made me think about indigeneity before I knew that term. I realized the only time I was comfortable was around Maoris and I realized that’s because they reminded me so much of people from here. My off-reservation life is characterized by moments of discomfort who have showed me who I am. Everyone who leaves has to develop an aspect of their personality that allows them to function in the off-reservation world. I would watch people when they first came to Missoula from the reservation and see their personality transform. I learned who I am and who people here are through the negative; like by figuring out what this place isn’t I figured out what it is, and that goes for myself too. -shwm
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adapted from: Montana Cadastral
Comparing Montana cities + towns
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Kalispell
East Glacier
Browning
Heart Butte
Missoula
Helena
Great Falls
Bozeman
Billings
Living in Montana / living in Blackfoot territory
Kalispell
East Glacier
Browning
Heart Butte
Missoula
Helena
Great Falls
Bozeman
Billings
0
4
8
16mi
Montana city Montana city within Blackfoot traditional territory + former reservation boundaries Rez town
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Rez towns (solid) and Census Designated Places (dash) as recognized by the US Census Bureau
East Glacier
Browning
0
I firmly believe if we dropped 100 houses in here overnight, another 200 more people we didn’t know about on the list who would sign up. People have really given up that Housing is ever going to meet their need so they don’t even sign up. If you had 100 you took off the list, some hope would be restored and you’d have another 200 the next day. -chancy kittson The challenge is, we’re running out of land to build on close to town. On the tax credit side of it, it’s all about points. For federal funding, you need to be within a qualified census tract—that’s within the town of Browning. I catch push-back that we’re building on top of each other and I understand that, but we have to qualify within the census tract and minimize development costs by staying close to your developed infrastructure.
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The current census doesn’t work because it’s an estimate. They can go to a street and, when the ACS was done four years ago, we had an oil boom. So elderly people who owned land, life was pretty good for them. So if ACS came and went to grandma on the end of the street, she probably had a new car and a full bank account and life was good; but there were 12 other people on that street for whom life wasn’t so good, but grandma spoke for and represented all of them because she owned the home. -chancy kittson
Heart Butte 1
2
4mi
Blackfoot Crossing with Great Northern Railroad (Amtrak Empire Builder) and US Highway 2 below
Google Earth
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I say I grew up along Cut Bank Creek. I don’t like to say Starr School because people would always tease you about growing up in Starr School. -ke
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Google Earth
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Starr School on the Blackfeet Reservation
Missoula, MT with the University of Montana (center)
Google Earth
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And then the language: there’s nowhere else to go for Blackfoot; and the humor. The first thing I learned when I moved off-reservation was that I couldn’t tease white people.
I realized people there hardly ever laugh and they hardly ever smile. And then I would come home and all I would do was laugh and smile and tease for two days, and then I’d go back to Missoula and things would be really serious again. And then I’d come back here and we’d laugh for a long time again and then go back to Missoula and be serious again. That back and forth, back and forth.
If it was one thing, like I just miss the land, I think it would be easier. But it’s so many things it makes it nearly impossible for me to leave for more than a year or two. I’d rather go back where I hate all kinds of people but they’re still my people than be out here where I can’t even connect with anything. -shwm
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Hayfields contend with arid land and small streams on the allotted, mostly white-owned Eastern half of the Blackfeet Reservation
Google Earth
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Sometimes you go off the rez just to go off the rez. For Montana and the Blackfeet specifically, if you stay on the plains you’ll still be on your land for another 200 miles in any direction. Sometimes the best answer is, ‘you go off the rez.’ -rh
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